urge parliamentary scrutiny of the state within a state of the Khakis, especially the dreaded spy agency (DGFI). The interference of the Khakis into state politics will once again jeopardize institutionalization of elective democracy, good governance and secularism. The rogues fear social justice activists, critics, politicians and journalists too - Joy Manush!

Monday, May 06, 2013

Backlash against Bangladeshi bloggers

The bloggers of Shahbagh are facing a backlash – hunted by
fundamentalists, denounced in mosques as atheists, arrested by the government.
Those abroad are under threat. Meanwhile activists are still demanding justice
and cyber movements are using their mobilising power to deal with disasters

This has been a troubling week for those
who care about Bangladesh. The April 26 collapse ofRana Plaza, the garment factory building owned
by a prominent member of the ruling party, theAwami League, shows the economic costs of the
country’s “economic miracle.” Bangladeshi cyber-activists threw
themselves into raising funds and helping to buy medicines for hospitals
running out of supplies. If lives are being saved, one told me, it is because
ordinary people are helping to mobilise relief.

The
movement for accountability for war crimes, consists of several generations of
activists - from those who feel strongly about the war because they
witnessed its atrocities, to the children of victims demanding justice, to
younger generations born since the mass movements of the 1990s first demanded
war crimes trials. Each generation has experienced a backlash against it from
both fundamentalists and the state.

And
this is true of the most recent of these movements. The mass populist uprising
occupying Shahbag in Dhaka, calling for
‘maximum punishment’ (the death penalty) for war criminals, was sparked
by the triumphant V sign made by a convicted man. He saw his life sentence as a
victory. At first, the political parties courted the Shahbag movement,
with the government promising to rush through legislation that reflected
its main demands – allowing the prosecution to challenge the sentence to make
it harsher, and amending the law to enable the Jamaat e Islami to
be put on trial as an organisation. TheJamaat-e-Islami,the largest Islamist political
party in Bangladesh,
responded to the conviction and death sentence of the Deputy leader of the
party, Delawar Hussein Sayeedi, with a country-wide campaign of violence, with
particularly vicious attacks on religious minorities, including killing Hindus
and destroying temples and homes. Christian Bangladeshis also reported attacks,
but in some cases people were too afraid to make an official report.

Abroad,
the conviction was referred to as ‘judicial murder’, to capitalise on the
revulsion against the death penalty. But Western criticism of the Tribunal
process failed to note also that peaceful opposition to religious
fundamentalism was met by death threats, assault and murder. All
opposition to them was labelled ‘atheists’, and a label that seemed intended to
provoke mass revulsion, promote extra-judicial killings as well as create a
climate for laws criminalising blasphemy.

Rajib,a
young blogger, activist and professed atheist who was targeted online and then
murdered, has become an iconic figure in the movement. The
fundamentalists have gone after a number of individual bloggers, beating people
up and issuing death threats online or on mobiles. Labelling people as
atheists, whether they are or not, puts them at risk of attack, and the
bloggers have been targeted as atheists by both Muslim fundamentalists and the
government.

In
their defense, atheists, humanists and secularists and declared April 25
an International Day to Defend Bangladesh's Bloggers.With some more protests planned on 4th
May in deference to the tragedy currently gripping Bangladesh. The young
bloggers need all the support they can get, for another fundamentalist group
has arisen out of nowhere with a familiar list of fundamentalist demands. On April 7 this group,Hefazat e Islam,staged a mammonth “long march” of half
a million people to protest against the mixed sex, peaceful, candlelit
gatherings in Shahbagh. They made13
demands,which contain many of familiar obsessions of
fundamentalists. Apart from demanding a defamation law with the highest
punishment (in other words making blasphemy punishable by death), Hefazat
wants to declare Ahmadiyas to be non-Muslim, attacks practices such as candle
lighting and putting up sculptures, opposes sexual mixing and “promotion of
Islamophobia among the youth,” wants compulsory Islamic education at all levels
and an end to “ungodly education, inheritance laws and unIslamic laws
generally.” Christian and other NGOs are attacked for proselytizing and “an immediate and unconditional release of all detained Islamic scholars”
is demanded.

Rather
than defend the Shahbagh bloggers against fundamentalists, the government has
found it expedient to crack down on them. When Hefazat e Islam prepared a list
of 84 “atheist” bloggers, the government responded with its own list of those
who had “hurt religious sentiments.” Four bloggers have been taken into
custody and more arrests are threatened. In order to humiliate and
terrify dissenters, the police paraded the bloggers and had them photographed
with their computers as if they found a cache of stolen goods.One blogger wrote,“it broke our hearts but it will not
break our spirits.” Their accounts have been hacked, whether by non-state or
state-backed people it is hard to say. Some bloggers have noticed that
their arrested colleagues’ accounts remained active even after they were
arrested, andhave speculatedthat “evidence” may have been planted
in them.

These
demands are nothing new to Bangladesh,
where Islamists have been trying to get a blasphemy law passed since the early
nineties, when they went after the writerTaslima Nasrin.By labelling all bloggers as atheists,
the fundamentalists hope turn the tide of public opinion against them.
Throughout the war crimes trials, Jamaat’s strategy has been to say that they
are being attacked as Muslims and as an opposition party, and to evade
addressing the grave crimes of which they are accused. Their lobbying
campaign has been very persuasive for many MPs in Britain,
who demanded an invitation to monitor the Tribunal while alsoinstructingthe
government of Bangladesh
that they should not have ‘a retributive process’ but adopt a reconciliation
model.

That
is why it was heartening to see support for the principle of accountability
from MPs from a range of parties. Two British MEPs, Charles Taylor,
Conservative, and Jean Lambert of the Green Party, addressed a rally on war
crimes in London
on 28th April, which passed off peacefully. Emily Thornberry, the Shadow
Attorney General, who has recently travelled in Bangladesh, acknowledged the strong
democratic mandate for the trials and the immense strength of feeling on the
issue. She said that if people were assured that life actually meant life,
rather than a sentence that could be reversed by a change in government, the
issue of the death penalty may not have arisen at all.

Writing
in 2002 about the campaign by Jamaat e Islami and other fundamentalist
organisations to make blasphemy a criminal offence, Bangladeshi Supreme Court
lawyer Sara Hossain described athree-pronged strategy, “invoking
criminal laws to curtail speech by targeted individuals and groups, fomenting a
climate of intolerance against them, and mobilising public sentiment for the
enactment of draconian new laws – as key tools in their project of silencing expressions
of difference, and asserting their vision of a monolithic Islam.” All these
elements are present in today’s battles.

The
conflict between Bangladeshi secularists and fundamentalists has spread to London’s East End where, on Feb. 8th, at Altab Ali Park, young
demonstrators supporting Shahbagh clashed with men from the Jamaat-dominated East London mosque. For older anti-racists, the
scenes were remniscent of decades old battles where the police simply protected
the aggressors ‘freedom of speech’ and right to threaten and intimidate.
Fundamentalist demonstrations from the Jamaat associated East London
Mosque have been taking place regularly after Friday prayers, according
to activists. Secular Bangladeshis of all religious backgrounds and none
were finally able to rally and march outwards from Altab Ali park through Brick Lane and the
surrounding streets. It was a suitable demonstration that the secular activists
who have been receiving regular death threats have not been cowed into retreat.

Thousands
of leaflets have been distributed from the East London Mosque and across the
world labelling prominent bloggers as atheists. Sermons have been read
attacking atheists, Hindus and suggestive statements made regarding sexual
assault. In Bangladesh,
fundamentalists paraded a banner which said, ‘we demand the death penalty
for atheist bloggers because they use obscene language to criticise Allah,
Mohammed and the Quran.’ Statements such as these, along with murderous
attacks on atheist and free thinking bloggers, need to be considered alongside
the leaflets identifying named individuals as atheists and accusing them of
insulting religion, to see whether they amount to incitement to murder.
Fundamentalists consider itan obligation for believersto kill apostates; arecent Moroccan fatwa makes this very
clear, as does the experienceof
an atheist from Bangladesh, applying for asylum in Canada.

It
is clear that free-thinking activists will be actively targeted first by
fundamentalists, and then by the state, so can expect no protection anywhere.

AsAsif Mohiuddin,one of the Bangladeshi bloggers said
just before his arrest, “To drag religion into politics and playing with it
like a football is the real offence towards religion.” Authorities in
both London and Dhaka
are playing with fire if they think protecting hate campaigns is the same as
defending freedom of religion.

Gita Sahgal, is a film maker and writer, formerly worked with the Amnesty International. She is founder of the
Centre for Secular Space, which opposes fundamentalism, amplifies secular
voices and promotes universality in human rights.